Sour By The Minute (But You're Sweeter By The Hour)
by Oracle Glass
Summary: Natasha and Bruce come to an understanding, of sorts. All it takes is some awkward conversations...and maybe a little something else. A direct sequel to I Know My Place (But It Don't Know Me), wherein a friendship turns to something more intimate.


It's impossible to predict that bonding with your spy-assassin-teammate (who you had nearly smashed into a pulp in the very recent past) over Canadian children's literature and glasses of wine would actually be a thing, but it turns out, it can be done. After a long, comfortable space of time, with Natasha curled up in the crook of his arm, his stomach had broken the mood by growling, and she had chuckled and suggested dinner out.

"Fancy? Casual?"

Natasha considered. "Fancy, but not Stark expense account fancy."

"Sounds great," he said. "Meet you in the lobby in a half-hour."

They went off to their respective quarters, the presence of which had done a lot to reconcile everyone towards trying their hand at this whole "team" business. Tony had sketched in the outlines of everyone's rooms, but left the fine details to each teammate, so each set of living quarters clearly bore the stamp of the individual personality living there. Bruce's suite of rooms served as a quiet oasis, with dark walls and low lighting, although admittedly he spent most of his time three floors up in the lab.

He opened his closet and surveyed the contents. Tony had, out of reasons known only to himself, nagged Bruce into upgrading his wardrobe. It was a nice thought, but it didn't really make much of a difference - no matter how he started out, at the end of the day he tended to look had eyed him and mumbled something about "rumpled crazy" being Bruce's default setting. But the shopping trips meant that Bruce actually had options to wear for an evening out, as opposed to picking whatever looked least like it had done duty as either pyjamas or a rag to mop up a chemical spill. He selected dark grey slacks and a sleekly tailored shirt of some shade of blue or other ("Pepper says it's a good color for you, and crossing Pepper on matters of fashion is a very bad idea") and a pair of shoes that probably cost more than his entire wardrobe pre-Stark. There, presentable. With Natasha, he'd bet nobody would be looking at him anyway. He beat her down to the lobby by about ten minutes.

When the elevator doors opened, he knew he had been right. Nobody would even remember seeing him while he stood next to her. She wore a simple black dress, restrained and elegant, that showed off pale shoulders but was otherwise almost prim ("Which makes it hotter," a tiny voice in the back of his head said.) Small gold earrings gleamed when she turned her head, the only jewelry she wore. Her one conceit was a pair of absolutely wicked heels that added a good four inches to her height. Against the dark dress, her hair seemed to give off its own light. Bruce offered his arm.

"I'd say you look lovely, but I know you know, and I'm not sure how many liberties I'm allowed to take."

She took his arm. "Such liberties, I am persuaded to accept."

A Stark car dropped them off at a small gem of a restaurant, prized mostly, Natasha told him, by other chefs, not socialites grubbing for society column inches. Over multiple courses of incredible food, he found himself deep in conversation with Natasha. She was obviously well-traveled, and could converse about a city's museums, government offices, sewer systems, and rooftops with equal aplomb. She hadn't spent as much time in India as he had, and listened attentively to some anecdotes of his time there. It was all a little surreal and although he was having a good time, something was tickling the back of his brain. The notion that something was off-kilter grew more insistent the longer they restricted the conversation to light topics. Towards the end of the meal, as Natasha was studying the dessert menu, he said abruptly,

"Natasha...what's happening here? Understand, I'm enjoying myself very much, but there's a part of me that wonders why you're...I don't know what to call this...why you're letting this happen. And who, exactly, I'm talking to. A teammate? A date? A spy?"

She paused her reading and set down the menu. And there it was - the tiny pulse at her wrist beating rapidly, although it was the only signal that she was discomfited. Her face was neutral.

"Maybe it's purely selfish on my part," she said. "Charm you, and perhaps your...close companion...is less likely to be upset with me in the future."

"Is that it? All this cozy alone time is you using your skillset on poor dumb Bruce, so easily blinded by a pretty face? An attempt to better your odds with the other guy? Sensible, I guess. If you knew nothing about me." He bit down a surge of anger. Careful, careful.

She shook her head vehemently, lips pressed into a thin line. "First of all, I'd have to be insane to think of you as "poor dumb Bruce," so you can stop trying to push me down that particular road. You think I haven't done my research? I've read your file cover to cover and back again. I've studied you. It would be common sense for me to charm you as Bruce, to try and get some leverage with the Hulk...if I thought it would work. Plainly, it wouldn't and I'd be blind to miss that very important fact. You're not some dumb mark I'm playing." Her voice darkened. "Or you'd be played already." She twisted her napkin between her fingers and muttered, almost inaudibly, "It would be unprofessional."

He stopped to consider this. The thought that she considered it an affront to her professional skills actually made a dent in his outrage. His anger ebbed, but the impulse to continue poking at this sore spot remained. Natasha, however, wasn't done.

"Anything I say to you, you already know. I'm not equipped to cope with your alternate self. You present a problem for me. I have a very great love, Bruce, of controlling every aspect of a situation I can. Being out of control...disturbs me. You used that against me, very neatly, in India."

"I'd apologise for that, but...well, no, I won't. I did not want to come be a part of Fury's band of boy scouts. When you showed up...tricked me, lied to me..., well, you may see yourself as helpless against my other self, but to me you represent a hell of a lot of things that can interfere with my autonomy. SHIELD obviously isn't going to let me fade quietly off the grid. And don't think you're alone with the desire to control a situation. If I don't control myself and my environment, I level city blocks."

She nodded. "I know how that cage on the Helicarrier made you feel. It wouldn't have been an avenue for Loki to exploit if it wasn't genuinely hurtful. That one liked to find the soft spots and twist the knife harder when he found them."

She took a deep breath.

"How about this- no apologies from either of us. It may not be the only time our personal approaches to things collide. But doing this," her gesture took in the entire restaurant, "at least makes us understand each other a little more. So maybe situations like Calcutta won't happen in the future."

"The black ops spy calls for more love and trust among her teammates? I'm not sure I can buy that, Natasha. No offense, but you live and breathe deception. I'd love to believe that what we had earlier today was some sort of moment of understanding between us, but why should I?"

Natasha was genuinely angry now, and a small part of him relished the expression on her face. Let somebody else be the angry one for a change. Her hands clenched and unclenched on the table as if wanting to seize a weapon. He could see the exact moment she clamped down on her emotions, her face returning to her neutral default.

"Fair, I suppose. Not exactly kind, to think of me as quite that cynical, but then, you don't know me, do you? I'm just the same collection of facts in a file that you were to me, but I'd hope that recent events would have let you see Natasha, and not just the Black Widow."

She exhaled and turned both hands palms upward, as in supplication. "Bruce, you'll always have to cope with your alter ego. With people wondering if you're going to stub your toe and take the entire city down. With people terrified of you once they know who you are. And I will always have to cope with people assuming that everything I say is buried under five layers of lies and misdirection, that I can never speak the truth even if I wish it. Because it's true, sometimes, for both of us. And it's false, sometimes, for both of us. I'm utterly terrified of the Hulk. But I find myself very fond of Bruce. And we'll be working together, it seems. Is there a way for us to be at ease with each other?"

He looked at her closely, examining her face for any sign of deception - not that he could tell if she was faking her sincerity. She was staring at the tablecloth and as she felt his eyes on her, she looked up and met his gaze forthrightly. The truth, or manipulation? He sighed. No way to be certain of anything, it seemed.

"Let's go find a drink."

Instead of drinks, it turned out to be ice cream and a walk through the city. People were out in droves on a pleasant evening, talking, laughing, enjoying the night. Music blared out of every doorway, mixed with the happy chatter of people enjoying themselves.

Bruce and Natasha walked side by side, wary of each other but not antagonistic. Her shoulder brushed his arm occasionally when they were crowded on the sidewalk. All the tension of the restaurant confrontation seemed to have been drained away, and what was left was an oddly companionable silence between them.

When Natasha finally mentioned that her shoes, pretty as they were, were not designed for much more walking, he flagged a cab and they made their way back to the Tower. Natasha looked out the window and he watched the lights of the city play against her skin: light, dark, blue, green, gold. She turned to him and caught him looking. He was abruptly embarrassed, but as she turned back to the window, she slid her hand into his and held it the rest of the way home.

They rode the elevator in the same silence. She had slipped out of her shoes and stood barefoot next to him, and he realized how small she was. All that power, such a tiny package. His own strength was binary, present or absent, overt and unmistakable or completely hidden behind his rumpled professorial exterior. She could hide herself in a thousand different ways.

He let go of her hand and they went to their respective rooms. Shedding his clothing on the floor behind him as he went, he stripped and headed for the bathroom. His specifications for his bathroom had made Tony whistle in admiration, but there were some things you missed when you were living in the far reaches of the world. Given the opportunity to pull out all the stops, he had requested a cavernous shower and a soaking tub that could bathe an elephant. He started a bath, turning the water as hot as he could stand it. He slid in, sighing. Muscles that he hadn't known were knotted began to unclench. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, letting everything wash away.

She could move with complete stealth, so the noise she made had to be for his benefit. He opened his eyes, heartbeat racing, and saw that she stood in the doorway of his bathroom, still in her dress and bare feet. WIth an easy motion, she unzipped herself and stepped forward out of her dress. A bra of black lace followed, as did a tiny scrap of a pair of panties, tossed carelessly on the floor.

"Natasha," he stammered. "How did you..." no, stupid question, she went where she wanted to go...why was she here? "What are you doing?"

She stepped into the tub gracefully, barely causing the water to ripple. She sank down to her knees and leaned forward, almost nose to nose with him.

She said softly, "I get accused all the time of using sex to destroy men. People like to think of it as some sort of sick calling card of mine. You know what I think sex is best for? It's for building an understanding when words don't work."

She closed the gap between them and kissed him, the barest brush of her lips against his. He exhaled, his breath warm against her ear, and she made a small, pleased noise and kissed along the line of his jaw and down his neck. Her hands slid against his chest as she braced herself against him. His arms came up around her and drew her against him and she straddled him so that she could be cradled against his chest. He said something but it was muffled in her hair, so she eased sideways and tucked herself under his arm in a similar fashion as on the sofa so many hours previously. One hand continued to slide along his body, playing with the wet curls of his chest hair, sliding down teasingly across his stomach and back up.

"Yes?" she said brightly, looking up at him. "You were saying something?" Her mouth was quivering with mischief.

"I was...it was...I don't think it was anything important." He bent to kiss her and she responded with enthusiasm, her body seal-sleek against him, her tongue sliding along his lower lip. A few breathless minutes later, he had slid his hands over as much of her as he could reach, gotten a little headrush from the depth of her kisses, and then gotten genuinely dizzy after knocking his head against the side of the bathtub while trying to figure out where to put his hands next.

"That's it," he grumped, standing up and shedding water like a (slightly rumpled, professorial) statue of Neptune. "I am too old to be bedding nubile young women in the bath. We're going to do this in the bedroom like civilized people."

Natasha stood up as well, and took his proffered hand to step out of the tub. "I know when to listen to my elders," she said demurely, and followed him out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. There, the innocence fell away as she hooked his ankle with her own and toppled him deftly onto the bed, pouncing. He rolled, pulling her with him and sliding down her body to capture her breasts in his hands, teasing her nipples with his mouth and fingers as she squirmed under him, her eyes closed. One of his hands drifted further downwards, brushing against her belly, sliding between her legs, two blunt fingers finding her clit and applying pressure in gentle circles.

She gasped, her hands locked in his hair, her hips bucking upwards against his exploring fingers. He nipped the side of her breast and then locked his mouth over a nipple, alternately sucking and flicking his tongue against its stiffness. She rolled her hips in response, demanding. He slid a finger inside, followed by a second, fucking her with them at first slowly, then more insistently, the heel of his hand continuing to press against her clit.

She said something in Russian, her voice thick. He laughed softly against her stomach and matched the speed of her hips, suspending her for a long, breathtaking moment on the cusp of an orgasm. FInally she shuddered, the muscles of her stomach tightening under his cheek, and he pressed his advantage. Her back arched as she came, pulling at his hair with a pain that he relished savagely, and he moved between her legs to slide inside her before the waves of her orgasm had passed away.

She wrapped herself around him, her powerful thighs locking around his hips, her mouth finding his, open and hot. They wrestled for a moment, more like judo than sex, and came within a few inches of rolling off the bed entirely before Bruce, with an effort of pure will, got a knee down and pushed them back towards the center of the bed again. Natasha laughed breathlessly in his ear and rocketed her hips upwards, so he met her force for force, and they moved together in quick thrusts. He was still on top, her face now framed by his bracing forearms, and he deliberately slowed the pace of things, bending to kiss her with a delicate and slow precision instead of the frenetic rush of a few moments before.

Time spun out, seemingly slowing in defiance of all the properties of the universe, suspending them in a bubble no bigger than their two bodies. Then, with a rush, the world came roaring back, and he choked, closed his eyes, and came in deep, groaning spasms. She felt it happen and it spun her off again, the two of them clutching each other and forgetting how to breathe for a few long seconds.

Eventually, his sight cleared. He was on his back, staring at a perfectly nice, very ordinary ceiling. His arms and legs all felt very far away from each other, and his head felt more like a balloon than a skull. Natasha was next to him, panting softly, and his ego did a satisfied little backflip at the thought that maybe things had not gone quite as she had expected. They weren't touching, but he could feel her clearly, her energy tingling along his skin.

She rolled over and propped herself up on one elbow to regard him solemnly. He blinked and met her gaze, not entirely able to hide a hazy, shit-eating grin, which was met with an uncomplicated grin in return.

"So, Doctor Banner," she drawled, her voice still faintly shaded with Russian. "I did say I was fond of you, didn't I? I must say," she stretched, catlike, "I am an excellent judge of character."

"If I were as smart as people say I am, I'd ask what happens next, Natasha. But I don't know what I want the answer to be."

She shook her head, the motion spreading her hair against the bedspread in a wild tangle. "No need for that. We've put the past in the past, made some sort of a new start. Teammates, sex, saving the world...now we have a context for ourselves. Doesn't usually happen like this," she stifled a gigantic yawn with the back of her hand, "but I'm very happy it did, this time."

He reached a hand out and felt her take it, their fingers clasped together. He thought about the evening, Anne of Green Gables, her pulse beating quickly as she toyed with a spoon, drummed her fingers against a white tablecloth. Her face reflecting the lights of the city, her hand in his as they rode the elevator, her bare feet. Her fears, and her courage.

"Me too."


End file.
